


We Were Up All Night Talking Trash and Wasting Time

by thought



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:23:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling apart as team building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Up All Night Talking Trash and Wasting Time

Tex is attacking her hair with one of Connie’s knives; standing in front of a sink in the bathroom and hacking determinedly at the ragged strands while their fallen comrades drift listlessly into wispy piles around her boots.

"Are you fifteen?" South asks flatly, but she retreats out the door without actually coming close. York is sitting on the floor on the far side of the room, legs stretched out in front of him, head tipped back against the outer wall of the showers. He's cradling an entire pot of coffee against his chest, occasionally tipping the spout up to his mouth. His eyes keep wanting to close, even the bad one, which is very inconsiderate of them and which is perhaps related to how he wound up sitting on the floor of the bathroom getting his first glimpse of Agent Texas without her helmet while she butchers her ponytail with the methodical sort of brutality you hit after day four under enemy fire. Delta paces the back of his head like a half remembered song, there one moment and gone the next and wavering just out of focus. Each electric pulse dancing synapse to synapse seems to light him up from the inside, sparks crossing wires that vibrate high notes down through his chest and fingertips and curl their tangled ends to contact points at each temple.

He's not sure if Tex knows he's there --incorrect-- until he doesn't tip the pot of coffee back fast enough and slops the still warm contents down his chin in mortifying dribbles. The adrenalin bounces him half upright and snatching at a towel like a spring's been released, and Tex meets his gaze in the mirror for half a second. Says, "You're a parody of yourself."  
He dabs at his face, lets the drumbeat rhythm of his heartbeat shake through his bones even as his hands shake visibly. "I think," he says, careful to focus on precise annunciation and deliberate speech patterns, "That we're presented here with an exciting moment to reflect on the importance of material selection when constructing one's permanent residence." Question-- "I was being facetious, D."

She doesn't respond, just sticks her head under the tap and shakes like a dog when she surfaces, water and blond fragments spattering every which way across the mirror and the tiles. She runs fingers through the mess that her hair's become, jagged across the bottom where it rests at the nape of her neck. She'll have to fix it up enough to be presentable-- nobody sticks to regulation for that sort of stuff in their squad, but there're limits. York's hand twitches up to his own hair, realizing that smushing his head against the shower wall for the past fifteen minutes has likely left the back in disarray. He's gonna need to steal more of Connie’s hair jell, which is a prospect terrifying enough that he almost considers going without.

Carolina comes in before he can act on his own hair emergency. She flicks her gaze over the mess on the floor before settling an unimpressed stare on Tex. York is pretty sure it's physically impossible for Tex to care less.

"I'm sure you're planning on cleaning this up," Carolina says coolly, stepping around the mess to come stand over York. He pulls his legs up and curls in around the coffeepot. Delta flickers closer to the front of his head, dancing around his optic nerves like a cat pretending disinterest.

"York, why are you sitting on the floor?" Carolina asks.

York thinks about it. "There are no chairs."

She huffs out an irritated breath. "Get some sleep. You're no good to anyone like this." There's affection threaded through her tone but he flinches anyway. A voice that sounds a lot like Connie’s raises a hand from the back of his head to wonder who he's doing good for in these going on three weeks of downtime, no mission objectives but the top of the leaderboard while the war rages on over news channels and casualty reports.

Tex glances back over her shoulder, a hand coming up absently to shove hair behind her ear (and almost cutting the ear off in the process with the knife she's still holding, fucking hell) and smirks down at York. "You know somebody's gonna start you on decaf if you don't listen to her."

York whimpers involuntarily, even as Delta purrs a desperate sort of approval. York thinks maybe if the damn AI could stop his own fucking anxious twitchiness the caffeine wouldn’t be so necessary in the first place. He means to say something along these lines to Carolina, but she's gone still above him, the fresh towel she'd picked up seconds before hanging limply at her side like an afterthought. She’s staring at Tex like she's seeing something else. Tex doesn't notice, turned back to the mirror and wiping her face down with a cloth. York stretches out a foot to nudge against Carolina's ankle, and she returns to motion like somebody took their finger off the pause button.

"You cut your hair," she says. Tex snorts.

"Wow. What stunning observation skills, Carolina. I can see why you're top--oh wait."

Carolina clenches her teeth so hard York sees a muscle on the side of her jaw twitch. "It suits you," she says tightly, which is a fucking lie, Tex's hair is a fucking disaster, but Carolina disappears around the corner before either of them can speak and a moment later the sound of the shower at the far end starts up.

*

They've got 24 hours of leave the next day. It's unheard of. South spends none of it sober.

"I'm having bad high school flashbacks," Connie says when they all meet up at a late night diner. Maine pats her shoulder gently. York's pretty sure Maine never got the chance to step foot in a high school.

"I never spent this much on re-processed fried tofu when I was in high school," Wash says, poking disconsolately at his plate. York and Connie have built a defensive wall of condiments to protect the coffee pot from anyone else at the table. Carolina's eating what looks like an entire lemon pie. Wyoming is drinking Tex's cheap beer like it's a test of his emotional and physical fortitude in battle.

"Bet you never hung out in places like these, boss," South says.

Carolina shrugs stiffly. "Sure. Coffee was cheap and plentiful."

North chuckles. "And here I figured York would be the one with the secret coffee addict past."

"Secret?" Wash says, at the same time South says

"Past?"

York salutes them with his cup. Carolina wipes her mouth with a napkin. "Coffee. Protein boosts. Stims, when that wasn't enough anymore. The occasional upper. I didn’t really. Slow down during high school. Too many things I needed to be good at. Too many hours I didn't want to be at home. I was a bit of a perfectionist back then."

"I'm not even going to bother," Wash says. York rolls his eyes.

"Probably does you good to be second best for a change," Tex says. Wyoming bangs his head back against the booth. York wonders if Tex is one of those people who refuses to wear a seatbelt, too. Thinks maybe there's a reason Wyoming stole her drink.

"Success can be measured in a lot of ways," Carolina says, smiling determinedly.

South sets her water glass down heavily. "Amazing."

"South," North says warningly.

"Because last time I checked, the only way it gets measured is on the fucking leaderboard."

Connie and Florida share a look heavy with meaning. York is deeply uncomfortable with literally any of the possible things they could be communicating.

"Don't let it become personal," Carolina says to South. York actually chokes on his coffee. Tex starts laughing and doesn't stop until Carolina plants an elbow in the back of her skull and smushes her face down against the grimy table top.

"You're in the second implantation group, aren't you, North?" Connie asks. Wash glares at her. North hunches his shoulders a bit, glancing guiltily at his sister.

"Yeah. I am. Me and Reggie."

"Mmhm," Wyoming says. "Just the two of us."

Tex's shoulders jerk like she's trying to straighten up but Carolina cheerfully leans all her weight into the arm keeping her pinned down. York's pretty sure Tex could break the hold if she really wanted to, but if he thinks about it the general state of the Freelancers around the table kind of makes putting your head down and only moving enough for fatalistically cheerful chuckling seem an appealing option.

“Because why would we bother spreading the AI evenly amongst the specializations?" South grumbles. "Let's implant both the snipers at once. Very tactically sound."

"You know it's about leaderboard position," Carolina says evenly. "North's higher than you are. That's how it is. Improve your work and you'll get an AI faster."

"I--" North says, a little desperately. "I need to go smoke a cigarette. Possibly a couple. Possibly a couple dozen, excuse me."

Carolina frowns disapprovingly. North glances down apologetically, but still continues shoving his arms into his jacket. Neither South or Florida seem inclined to get up to let him out of the booth, so he winds up sliding down beneath the table and clambering out past everyone's legs.

"I was in a band in high school," York says, once the uncomfortable silence left in the wake of North's departure has refused to fade.

Connie perks up. "What did you play?"

"I sang, actually."

"Do not ask for a demonstration," Carolina says quickly. York pouts.

"Please don't say it," Wash says to Connie. "I might explode."

Connie nods. "Anyway, here's--" Maine puts a hand over her mouth, but he's grinning. York doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about, but it's the first time he's seen Maine smile since his injury.

*

They leave in a slow, uncoordinated mess of glares and exhausted stumbling. By the time York and Carolina get outside most everyone else is already standing around in the parking lot like bored teenagers with an hour left before curfew and nothing to fill it. Tex is standing beside North in the shadows at the side of the building, red embers at the tips of their cigarettes and shimmers of blond hair the only indicators of their presence. Connie keeps looking over at them, teeth tugging thoughtfully at her lower lip.

"You should go for it," Wash says.

"Which one?"

Wash shrugs. Grins. "Either. Both."

South laughs too loudly in the breathless seconds between passing cars. "You'd fucking destroy them, CT."

Carolina hooks fingers into York's belt loops. His chest feels tight, suddenly terrified of the inevitability of the letting go that comes with taking hold. The stripe of skin where the backs of her knuckles brush above his belt feels the brand of each incidental contact.

I need to remember this, he thinks. Delta pushes soothing and safe and calm. York wonders if he keeps each of their memories like an endless photo album, wonders how worn and frayed the edges of this snapshot will become.

"Everything’s ending," he says out loud, hand catching at Carolina's wrist and holding on. Her pulse is fast under his fingers. Delta flickers, curious, down his arm and through his fingers and for a few seconds it's as if the three of them are caught as one entity to the beat of her blood under the skin.

"Come on, come on," she says, shoving him forward. There's a bus coming down the street that should get them back to the port, but they don't get on it. North and Tex do. Connie doesn't. Carolina shoves him stumblingly along in the darkness over curbs and gravel until they're standing in the cheap illumination of the run-down hotel across the road. Delta nudges York's limbs to regain his balance even as statistics about bedbugs flicker behind his eyes.

"Not that I'm complaining," York says. "But I didn’t realize it took that much to kill them."

Carolina frowns. "What?"

"Bed bugs."

"Jesus Christ, York. We'll be fine."

*

"I definitely feel fine," he says ten minutes later, naked on his back and dangling the cheap plastic spindle from the headboard from where it's tied to his wrist.

"I told you not to pull."

"I didn't. I'm pretty sure there was a particularly ambitious air current, ok, we're not exactly working with quality product here."

"She didn't even talk about her childhood," Carolina says. "You noticed. No high school stories. Which means it was either spectacularly terrible or unusually good."

"Neither of which is helpful to you, I know. Can we not talk about Tex while we're in bed, please?"

"I'm sorry, I thought once you started pretending your arm was a helicopter that was a 'no' on the sex part."

York flicks his wrist again, spins the little plastic bar faster. "Do you maybe want to untie this thing from me, then?"

She climbs on top of him. She's not wearing anything but her socks. "I thought you were good with your hands."

"I'd be happy to prove it if you didn't keep tying them up."

"You say like you don't beg for it. Jesus, I should've gone back to the ship. I'm going to be behind in training."

"I'd say you're pushing yourself too hard, but we already know how well that conversation will go. Look, if we're not going to have sex could you grab another blanket from the closet? I’m getting the coffee shakes and it's fucking freezing in here."

She gets the remains of the bed frame untied from his wrist, reaches up to untie the other one while she's at it. "Please never tell South we broke the bed. And we're having sex. Strangely I actually don't like watching you have an existential panic attack outside the world's worst diner."

"It wasn't--"

Incorrect.

"Shut up, D."

Carolina frowns thoughtfully. "Hey. Delta. Can you hold him down?"

"Oh good," York says. "You were thinking it too. We were sort of getting concerned. Also, I'm not letting you fuck me if it's just because you think I need calming down."

"Do you really think--"

"I was just putting it out there. Things have been kind of weird with us lately."

She winces. Presses both hands down on his chest. "Yeah. I know. I don't know what's going to happen, York."

"That was less reassuring than I thought it would be," he says, letting his hands fall automatically above his head and squeezing his eyes shut for a second. "But points for honesty."

She rolls off of him, stretches out pressed up against his side and throws one leg over his. Delta settles the same sort of casual, possessive weight over his arms, creeping down all the way over his shoulders. York thinks he could move if he wanted, push either of them off. The important part is that he doesn't want to.

Carolina smells like soap and sweat and her skin on his is hot like she's running a fever. She'd finished the entire pie at the diner and her metabolism is burning hard through all the sugar. She's probably not gonna be able to sleep without at least a short run. York, on the other hand, is fairly certain if he tries to force his body vertical again he'll just wind up throwing up coffee and bile. D's dulling the razor-edged hypersensitivity to bearable levels, at least, and York's highly developed caffeine tolerance and military determination is taking care of the rest. Carolina settles an arm across his hips. Her ribcage moves against his own with each even breath. She's holding herself in check for him, slowing herself down. It's not exactly a new idea, but he's still not sure if he's a help or a hindrance in the long run.

She jerks him off slow and deliberate and even, and it's not until he feels the way Delta counts off each motion in precise decimals that he realizes she's trying to settle both of them. She rubs herself off against his thigh until he begs pretty enough (or annoys her enough, whatever) to get his mouth on her. She braces hands against the wall and swears and jerks against his face hard enough to jar his jaw and when she flops down on top of him she says "I had to close my eyes because all I could focus on was the fucking remains of the headboard, how is this my life?"

He laughs for about five minutes, the vaguely hysterical hilarity of the sleep-deprived post-orgasm but still caffeinated disaster that he is. Delta’s kind enough to slip deep into his body's physical systems and insure he doesn't actually start crying. Carolina kisses him, both of them still laughing, and it feels like everything familiar and good. He hopes Delta is storing this exact sensation for the inevitable moment when he'll want to look back on it.

"We haven't changed," he says into her neck, hiding the words under the curtain of her hair. "We're still us. Why isn't that working anymore?" The panic has transmuted into melancholy.

She wraps arms around him and squeezes hard, brings one hand up to rest protectively over the implantation point at the back of his neck. "There's fire coming," she says. "We'll build something in the ashes, I promise."


End file.
